About us

We study and teach Societal Psychology: the psychology of Humans in complex socio-technical systems (organizations, communities, societies). Our research deals with real-world issues, we train the future global leaders.

As professionals well know, most challenges and bottlenecks in managing such systems as corporations or cities are not technical, but rather psychosocial: inducing or avoiding specific individual motivation and behavior, solving inter-group conflicts, overcoming resistance to change, fostering constructive decision-making, avoiding exclusion, etc.

These issues are urgent considering the limits to sustainability of the current global system. Psychology@LSE provides psychological science and tools to current and future managers and professionals; it trains the new generation of leaders who will face the acute problems of governance foreseeable around 2030-2050.

Why come to us

Psychology@LSE's specific approach of the Psychology of human behavior in large socio-technical systems is an illuminating and necessary part of the study of Organizations, Societies, Markets and Policies.

It enlightens the link from Micro to Meso and Macro, based on models and empirical studies of human psychology.

It provides solid basis and tools for social engineering to practitioners and leaders.

It opens new grounds from a more humanistic yet not naive approach to industrial and social governance.

Last but not least, Psychology@LSE is a friendly place: we believe one can be world-class and still human.

Half a century of advanced research

Societal Psychology originates in the pioneering works of the Psychology@LSE founders (Himmelweit, Farr, Gaskell), with the path-breaking studies on voting behavior, children and television, social representations, communication and public opinion that have left definitive marks in the field.

Continuing this tradition of involvement with real societal issues and openness to other academic fields, the current Psychology@LSE's pluridisciplinary staff's interests and capacity not only covers classic Social Psychology, but also Cognitive Science, Evolutionary Psychology, Communication, Psychoanalysis..

Research topics cover hot issues such as HIV, biotechnologies, religious communities, deviance, learning organizations etc. Many members spent part of their career in Industry, Commerce or Government overseas.

Psychology@LSE initiated in 1964 a tradition of using advanced investigation methods (from automated discourse analysis to video) and teaching techniques (Psychology@LSE streamed lectures on the web as early as 1995).

Psychology@LSE has collaborations and partnership with leading research institutions worldwide and major Industry. Working with or at the Psychology@LSE is a gateway to this top-level network, and to the large 5000+ Alumni community.

I'm currently working as a Marie Curie research fellow on a two-year project entitled "Risky Decision-Making: opening the human black box". It aims to answer the following research and operational question: how can we gather and study real-world data on a cognitive process such as decision-making, in risky situations, via digital ethnography methods?

This project expands my PhD research which focused on the development of a methodology for capturing and transferring tacit know-how embodied in professional gestures of nuclear power plant operators.Read more..

I am a British Psychological Society chartered psychologist who holds a PhD in Social Psychology from the LSE, where I currently work as a research officer with the HEIF5-funded project 'Communicating bottom-up social development: A dialogue between multiple stakeholders in the UK and Brazil'. I am responsible for producing a practical toolkit systematising the model of social development implemented by grassroots initiatives in Rio de Janeiro. I also lead on the production of a series of impact seminars and participatory workshops in the UK and Brazil, and implement the research communication strategy of our project through the blog Favelas@LSE. Read more

My research focuses on experiences of stress and momentary assessment methods. For my thesis, I am developing an improved method for taking momentary measurements of stress and anxiety using mobile technology, and investigating how these measurements interact with others such as environmental context and temperament. My background is in programming, social design of information systems, methodology, and psychology.

Research Interests:I am interested in developing new methods of experimentation for illuminating social psychological phenomena, principally how implicit attributions shape intersubjective contexts. The research projects for my PhD focus on two specific domains of intersubjective analysis.
The first concerns how humans experience socializing with “human-like” forms of artificial intelligence.

The second concerns how implicit self-representations affect behaviour, strategy, and outcomes in distributive economic bargaining simulations. Beyond these domains, my other research interests include evolutionary psychology, consumer psychology, and political social psychology.

Research Interests:My current research focuses on social representations of youth sexuality in the Tanzanian 'development' context, particularly exploring their construction and interaction through communicative encounters between young people, NGO workers and institutions (mediated through documents such as curricula, guidelines and reporting templates).

My interest in this area stems from my five years experience working in NGO programmatic and research roles focusing mainly on child and youth issues in East and Central Africa. My research interests also include intercultural communication, community participation, gender, global health, narratives and arts-based methodologies. I hold a BSc in Human Sciences and MSc in International Primary Health Care, both from University College London, UK.

Research Interests: My current research examines the experiences of working life for Foreign and Commonwealth Soldiers in the British Army and provides a commentary on the process of doing research in a hierarchical power-based organisation. The implications for the process of conducting social psychological research and researchers are highlighted.

My research interests include how social and organisational identity affect working life and experiences of work, power, gender and ethnicity in the workplace.

Research Interests:My current research interests are around the social dimensions of responses to HIV and climate change in sub-Saharan Africa. The initial focus of my PhD is on examining this through a comparative analysis of community participation in responses to HIV and climate change in Tanzania.
My background includes over ten years of professional and research experience in academia and civil society organisations working on international development, HIV, AIDS and climate change, alongside research interests in gender, social psychology, eastern and southern Africa, global health, gender-based violence, ecological sustainability and socio-economic issues. I hold a BA in Psychology and Philosophy from Trinity College Dublin and an MA in African Studies from Yale University.

Research Interests:My research focuses on developing new methodology to extract and explore human factors in complex and risky organisations, specifically the factors found to be influential in the financial trading domain. This work draws on context driven behaviours that underlie risk taking and human error and influence team performance in the finance setting. My interests include; decision making, human error, cognition, perspective-taking, and teamwork.

Research Interests:My PhD research explores the impact of media on women’s empowerment and women’s narratives in South Sudan. I have also studied the impact of media on maternal and child health; HIV/AIDS; malaria; education; peacebuilding; governance and elections; and climate change.

My research covers a range of media platforms (television, radio, mobile) as well as a range of media formats (drama for development, factual programming, public service announcements, mobile value-added services).

I have conducted research in 21 countries across Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe – including Bangladesh, Cambodia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, India, Kenya, Niger, South Africa, Senegal, Serbia, Tanzania and Uganda.

In addition to pursuing my PhD, I work as an international development consultant for organisations with a media, information and communication focus. I have managed research for USAID, UNDP and DFID-funded projects.

Changing the past to create the future: The role of social representations of history and identity in shaping Serbia's path to EU integration.

My current research explores the role of social representations of history in shaping present identities and future political aspirations. More specifically I am interested in understanding the role that representations and identities play in making certain versions of the future of a nation more acceptable than others. The two-way relationship between representations and identities is at the core of my research interests, alongside a desire to rehabilitate the image of history within social and political psychology. These interests, coupled with a strong belief in the benefits of applying social psychological theories to the field of political psychology, define the research I am conducting at the LSE.

Research Interests:Between the Brick and the Ballot: Exploring Community Conversations, Direct Democracy, and the Cultivation of Collaborative Social and Structural HIV/AIDS interventions in South Africa’s Eastern Province

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